Friday, October 17, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Moscow has Its ‘Own People’ in All Former Soviet Republics, Rosbalt Commentator Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, October 17 – Many in
Moscow think that Russia’s position in the CIS is “weak,” but the fallout from
the Ukrainian crisis shows that even in “relatively recalcitrant” countries
like Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, it is “much firmer than it might appear at
first glance,” according to Viktor Yadukha.

The reasons for that include “memories
about the USSR, the popularity of Russian television, and the fear of the
authorities of color revolutions,” the Moscow commentator says, but they also
include the fact that Moscow has “its own people” in each of these countries on
whom it can rely when it needs to (rosbalt.ru/exussr/2014/10/15/1327445.html).

Some of Moscow’s “people” are among
the populations of these countries which do not share the positions of their
governments, others are in the governments and have long been supportive of
Moscow, and still others are people who have been convinced by events in
Ukraine that they need to ally themselves with Moscow or risk being on the
wrong side of history.

Uzbekistan is a clear indication of
all three of these sources of support for the Russian government, Yadukha says.
Many Uzbeks are refusing to buy Ukrainian products even though Tashkent has not
imposed an embargo on them. Some Uzbek officials are distancing themselves from
Islam Karimov, and Karimov himself is ever less willing to oppose Moscow.

The same pattern, the Rosbalt
commentator says, can be observed in Kazakhstan where the population and the
government are not on the same page, where many officials are pushing for a
more pro-Moscow line, and where Nursultan Nazarbayev has backed away from his
push for the Latin script out of fear of creating condition for a Ukraine-style
crisis in Kazakhstan.

And it can be found in Azerbaijan as
well where the population remains heavily influenced by the Soviet past and
Russian television, where officials are increasingly deferential to Moscow, and
where Ilham Aliyev is concerned about the risk of a color revolution which he
believes the US could orchestrate but that Moscow opposes.

Some Moscow analysts like Fedor
Lukyanov argue that “the Ukrainian crisis has forever closed down the
possibility of post-Soviet re-integration” and that “it is time to completely
and forever forget about the USSR.”

That is “possible,” Yadukha says,
but Russia still has a lot of supporters in the societies and governments of “the
republics of the CIS, and Moscow would be stupid not to make use of it” now and
in the future.